THE TOTAL AMOUNT PROVIDED BY JIANGSU BY THE END OF 2013

MAIZHOKUNGGAR LHUNZHUB DAGZE QUXU

54million yuan

280million yuan

337million yuan 256.31

million yuan

413professionals and o�cials sent by Beijing since 1994, the largest team among 18

provinces

PAGE 18 | CHINA DAILY

7,615 projects

18 provinces and municipalities

70 central government ministries and departments

17State-owned enterprises 74

counties26 bil

billion yuan invested in projects in the past 20 years

+6,000 people have taken part in the aid project in

Tibet in the past 20 years.

12.7 % Tibet’s average annual economic growth since 1994.

The region’s GDP soared 14 times to 80 billion yuan in 2013.

BEIJING JIANGSU

CHILDREN’S AMUSEMENT PARK

LHASATELEVISION THE YAK

MUSEUMLHASA CULTURAL

PLAZA

1billion yuan spent by Beijing to build

entertainment facilities, including:THE LHASA CULTURAL AND

SPORTS CENTER

BEIJING’S AID TO LHASA

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

215million yuan

value of clothing and other daily necessities donated to Lhasa by

Beijing.

LHASA’S GDP GROWTH

annual average

INCREASE IN LHASA’S REVENUE

Per capita disposable income of Lhasa’s urban residents rose to 21,427 yuan in 2013 from 4,014 yuan in 1994. (Source: The Beijing Aid to Tibet organization in Lhasa)

Beijing spent 600 million yuan to build 10 schools, including Beijing High School of Lhasa, Beijing Primary School and Beijing Experimental School.

JIANGSU PROVINCE’S

AID TO LHASA

408 o�cials and professionals sent to work in

four suburban counties of Lhasa

2.76 billion yuan invested to

support Tibet

786 projects implemented,

each valued at more than 500,000 yuan.

59%

Proportion of Jiangsu’s aid between 1995 and 2011 spent on infrastructure projects

Rise in the per capita net income of local herdsmen

862yuan

1995 2013

7,897yuan

LHUNZHUB COUNTY

LHASA

1.05million yuan

to build Nanjing New Hope Primary School

in 1996

10million yuan

given to Nanjing New Hope

Primary School between 1997

and 2013

15million yuan

expected to be donated

in 2014

28million yuan

given to Nanjing Experimental

Primary Schoolbetween 2002

and 2013

26million yuan

expected to be donated in 2014

3million yuan

to build Nanjing Experimental

Primary School in 2001

FUNDS PROVIDED FOR SCHOOLS IN MAIZHOKUNGGAR COUNTY

8301994

8,265

2013

1.4 billion

1994

30.4 billion

2013

RISE IN INCOMES OF FARMERS AND HERDERS

DAGZE COUNTY

150Greenhouses, cattle breeding

centers, and chicken farms have been built during the past 20

years

60 million yuan donated for the

construction of Zhenjiang Central Primary School

20Doctors sent

17.4%

78 doctors and nurses sent by Beijing to

work at five hospitals in Lhasa, including the Lhasa People’s Hospital,

providing free health services to

10,000people, including treatment for more than 100 children with congenital heart disease.

QUXU

MAIZHOKUNGGAR COUNTY

80%of the projects have been aimed

at improving people’s living standards

100,000 Locals o�cials, doctors, teachers and

other occupations attended

500 lectures delivered by scholars and

professionals from Beijing, which trained more than

2,600 professionals for Lhasa

66 million yuan

in 1996

5billion

yuan in 2013

6 C H I N A D A I L Y 7 F R I D A Y, J U L Y 1 8 , 2 0 1 4

I n the early hours of a Sunday in June, Li Hongxia was woken by a phone call from the Tod-lung Deqen People’s Hospi-

tal in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet autonomous region. Li jumped out bed, grabbed her coat and rushed to a delivery room to help a woman expe-riencing a difficult birth.

Although the prenatal examina-tions had shown no abnormalities, Tsongrig, the expectant mother, began to bleed heavily before delivery. The doctors treating her followed stan-dard procedures because the 25-year-old Tibetan hadn’t told them that she’d experienced the same problem when giving birth to her first baby.

None of the doctors on the night shift knew how to operate the ultra-sound machine that would provide essential information, but when Li stepped into the delivery room just five minutes after she was phoned, the Beijing-based obstetrician immedi-ately prescribed uterotonics, drugs that induce contractions and labor while reducing postpartum hemorrhaging.

“The patient was very nervous and refused to undergo a further exami-nation when I got there. The key was to console her and keep her at ease. I caressed her hair, which was soaked with sweat, and smiled at her. I told her that I’ve treated cases like hers thousands of times in my 14-year career and that everything would be OK,” Li said.

Tsongrig grew calmer and began to cooperate with the doctors and nurses. About an hour later, the baby was born safely and Tsongrig’s hus-band burst into tears.

The case was just one of many Li has handled during her first year in Lhasa as part of the government-sponsored Aid to Tibet program. She’s one of 413 professionals in various fields sent by the Beijing Municipal Government to provide a helping hand on the plateau,

and divides her time between provid-ing medical services and training the local doctors and nurses.

The program was started in 1994 after former president Jiang Zemin visited Lhasa. Jiang ordered that Chi-na’s inland regions should provide assistance to the region, which was short of professionals in fields such as medical services, education, infra-structure construction and tourism management. Over the past 20 years, more than 6,000 officials and thou-sands of professionals have taken part in the program.

By the end of 2013, 18 provinces and municipalities, 70 central gov-ernment ministries and departments, and 17 State-owned enterprises had carried out 7,615 projects across Tibet, at a cost of 26 billion yuan ($4.2 billion), according to The Tibet Daily.

Since 1994, the economy of Tibet has registered average annual growth of 12.7 percent, an improvement many observers attribute in part to the aid program. By 2010, Tibet had received 300 billion yuan from the central government, accounting for 93 percent of its budget, according to the regional finance department. By 2013, the region’s GDP had soared 14-fold to 80 billion yuan.

However, experts on Tibet’s econ-omy say the economic and social developments will ultimately depend on the locals mastering the necessary technologies and management skills.

AcclimatizationTsongrig expressed her gratitude

for the safe birth by presenting the doctors with a silk scarf called a hada, a traditional goodwill gift. Li said all doctors have a duty to assist the sick and injured, but the work seems much tougher in the high country, 3,650 meters above sea level.

When Li’s colleague Zhao Libo arrived in Lhasa, she felt as though

her head was going to explode.“Altitude sickness has been a problem

for most of the people from Beijing. On the first night, I really felt the lack of oxy-gen, and a bad headache made me want to lean out of the window to get more air. But it was freezing, and I realized I couldn’t do that,” she said.

In the early days, Zhao and Li used bottled oxygen to relieve their breath-lessness, but as time went by, they started to acclimate and the thin air became less troublesome.

The headquarters of the Beijing Aid to Tibet organization in Lhasa, said 78 doctors are working in Lhasa’s hospi-tals, offering checkups and perform-ing complicated surgical operations in four of the city’s eight counties, while Jiangsu province is providing similar services in the other four.

Su Zheng, an obstetrician from Beijing, eases her breathlessness by telling herself to walk slowly and be studiously unhurried when treating women in labor. However, the thin atmosphere isn’t the only problem she has faced in Tibet. “At the Lhasa

Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospi-tal, there was no sterilized operating room. The local doctors were used to that, partly because the air in the city is pretty clean, but it was unfathomable to my colleagues in Beijing,” she said.

Every day after work, Su visited the hospital’s president and urged him to upgrade the facilities. At the same time, she petitioned her employer, the Beijing Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, to sponsor equipment. Her persistence paid off, and a sterilized operating room was put into use ear-lier this year.

“The people in Lhasa are friendly, and the women in labor always have a smile for the doctors and nurses. The equipment shortage can be solved, but the connection with the locals is sacrosanct, so I really wanted to do something to help,” Su said.

Outsiders who spend long peri-ods on “the roof of the world” run an increased risk of high blood pressure or heart disease than in other parts of China. In addition, compared with prosperous East China, Tibet is short of high-end medical facilities, and the staff also requires further training, which means medical assistance is essential.

In 2012, doctors from 17 provinces started a campaign to provide a wider range of care for youngsters with con-genital heart disease. In the last two years, more than 800,000 under-18s were given checkups, and of those, 1,495 underwent surgery free of charge, according to the Tibet health authorities.

Newborn mortality fallsLike Beijing, other provinces

have provided highly skilled medics to Tibet’s six prefectures, and since 1995, the Lhasa People’s Hospital has received about 70 million yuan in aid from Jiangsu province.

Qiu Linfang, a pediatrician at the

Lhasa People’s Hospital, said the mor-tality rate for newborns has fallen to 3 percent from 30 percent 20 years ago.

Many county-based hospitals have benefited from the aid program, too. Three doctors from Jiangsu are working at the People’s Hospital of Dagze county, and the number of deaths during childbirth has fallen dramatically under the guidance of the “imported” doctors, said Basang, the hospital’s president.

“They knew how to operate the new equipment used during surgery, which we didn’t. They helped us to establish new mechanisms for internal manage-ment, and more than 20 doctors at our hospital were given the opportunity to train in Jiangsu,” he said.

For Li, training is an essential part of the program: “As the old Chinese saying goes: ‘Even a clever housewife can’t cook meals without rice.’ What we have to do is to get the equipment and then show the local doctors how to operate it. With our help, I hope the local doctors will improve their skills. They all have a strong sense of duty.”

All the doctors who work on the aid program were assigned as tutors to a local doctor or nurse. Li Hongxia said many of the local doctors maintain contact with their “tutors”, after the visitors return to their hometowns.

Drolma, a doctor at the Damxung People’s Hospital, said her tutor has returned to Beijing, but she lost no time in phoning him when she was treating a man who had broken both legs: “My tutor was very thorough and patient. He told where to check on the man’s legs, and the drugs I needed to prescribe. It was very instructive, but also quite amusing that our conversa-tion was like a long-distance lecture via the phone.”

Contact the authors at huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn and daqiong @chinadaily.com.cn

Shifting the focus from infrastructure to industryBy Hu YoNgqI in Lhasa

Because the herders on the Tibetan plateau follow the seasons in their search for fertile pastures, they spent much of the year in makeshift accom-modations, which are always under threat when blizzards or landslides occur on the exposed land.

Losang, a herder from the village of Damchuka in Damxung county, was awarded a subsidy of 80,000 yuan ($13,000) by the Aid to Tibet program. The money accounted for more than half the cost of building his new house, and allowed him to buy a motorbike, which he uses to travel over the barren plateau and keep an eye on his sheep and yaks.

“The 297-sq-m house is twice the size of my old one, and it’s closer to the county seat so I can still run my brick factory and make extra money,” the 45-year-old said.

Under the program, two provincial-level governments are mandated to provide assistance for Lhasa or one of the six prefectures in the Tibet autonomous region. In the past 20 years, Beijing and Jiangsu province have provided about 5.5 billion yuan, and although Losang has never met

any of the officials, he knows his new house was sponsored by the Beijing government.

Every year, provinces and munici-palities set aside 0.1 percent of their revenue to help three counties and one district in Lhasa. Over the past two decades, a combined 2.8 billion yuan has been spent in the counties of Nyin-mo, Damxung and Todlung Deqen, along with Chengguan in Lhasa.

Raising living standardsIn 2012, 6.89 million yuan was

invested to build a square in Lhasa’s Jangshar village, and also to construct a highway to link the small commu-nity with other parts of the regional capital. The square is popular with the locals, who often gather there to practice traditional arts such as circle dances and Tibetan operas, and to play their favorite sports.

“Before, we had to walk in the mud when it rained, and people were often injured as a result of slipping on the sodden ground. The new road has really improved the situation,” said villager Sonam Tsetan.

Because the project is directed at raising local living standards, more than 70 percent of the total invest-

ment has been used to provide jobs and funding for businesses, according to the Lhasa government.

Initially, the funds were used to improve the local infrastructure by building highways, hospitals, schools and houses. However, as the local econ-omy developed, the locals started to look at ways of promoting sustainable industries, and quickly realized that mature industries in tune with local conditions were the best bets, according to Ma Xinming, head of the Beijing Aid to Tibet organization in Lhasa.

By the end of 2013, 59 counties had received a total of 127 million yuan from the central government. The money was mainly used to establish about 70 special projects to develop industries suitable for farmers and herders, such as cultivating highland barley, plateau rapeseed, potatoes, and greenhouse vegetables, and rais-ing yaks and Tibetan pigs. Traditional Tibetan medicine has also received funding.

growing demandIn Todlung Deqen, a county less

than 10 km west of Lhasa, money from Beijing has helped to build 360 greenhouses on two sites. To date,

the Chinese capital alone has donat-ed 217 million yuan to the county, and the greenhouses have helped to double farmers’ incomes, said Luo Hanmo, deputy general manager of Jingtu Eco-Agriculture Co. “The proj-ect pays the farmers’ land rents every year, and they also take a cut of the net income,” he said.

Many of the goods transported to Lhasa from the provinces of Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan are expensive, especially fresh produce, so another 1,860 greenhouses will be put into use in Todlung Deqen in the next few years to lower vegetable prices, according to Luo.

“Our company is planning to set up 20 direct-sale vendors within two years. They will sell vegetables for 15 to 30 percent less than the supermar-kets,” he said.

Drolma, a local farmer, said grow-ing vegetables is 20 times more profit-able than planting low-yield highland barley. She is confident she can grow a greater variety of vegetables in her greenhouses. “We are learning the necessary skills, because it’s a good way to develop our economy and improve our standard of living,” the 33-year-old said.

In other areas, trials are under way to assess the suitability of new strains of livestock. Dairy cattle introduced by officials from Jiangsu have raised incomes in Palding, Dagze county. Of the 217 families in the village, 69 have been taught to raise cattle and a further 62 have been given guidance in raising sheep.

Village chief Nyima said the cattle are milked twice a day to produce fresh milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt. “We used to grow highland barley and corn, but they generated annual per capita income of less than 2,000 yuan. Now that we are raising cattle, our incomes have more than doubled to 5,000 yuan.”

Nyima said the local people are intelligent, but are hampered by a lack of exposure to new methods and ideas: “The officials and agricultural experts are far more experienced than we are, so we take their advice about developing new breeds of domesti-cated animals or cultivating new veg-etables to raise incomes and improve the quality of life. In the end, though, we will only achieve our goals if we work as hard as possible and learn to understand new ways of doing things.”

An aid program to help the people of the Tibet autonomous region has seen doctors from Beijing and Jiangsu province making a contribution to treating local people and training medical staff, as Hu Yongqi, Da qiong and Palden Nyima report from Lhasa.

The people in Lhasa are friendly, and the women in labor always have a smile for the doctors and nurses. The equipment shortage can be solved, but the connection with the locals is sacrosanct, so I really wanted to do something to help.”Su ZHeNgAN oBSTeTRIcIAN fRom BeIJINg wHo Now woRkS IN LHASA HoSPITAL

‘‘

coverstory

Providing support for ‘the roof of the world’

guILLeRmo muNRo, Hu YoNgqI AND PALDeN NYImA / cHINA DAILY